Obama, McCain duel over market turmoil

GOLDEN, Colo. — The presidential nominees escalated their fight Tuesday to gain an edge in light of the economic downturn, as John McCain called for the creation of a commission to probe the financial market crisis and Barack Obama rejected the proposal as an attempt to “pass the buck.”

It was the second consecutive day that the campaigns sparred almost entirely over the economy, ratcheting up the pressure on McCain and Obama, neither of whom has established dominance of the issue, to gain the upper hand on a top concern for voters.

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There were sideshows, of course, but even those dealt with the economy.

The Obama campaign blasted out comments from top McCain economic adviser Carly Fiorina, who said Tuesday that neither McCain nor his running mate is qualified to lead a large corporation. (She said the same about the Democratic candidates.)

And in one of the Republican nominee's numerous populist statements Tuesday, McCain criticized Obama for flying to Beverly Hills for two big fundraisers, including one featuring Barbra Streisand.

“He talks about siding with the people — siding with the people — just before he flew off to Hollywood for a fundraiser with Barbra Streisand and his celebrity friends,” McCain said at a rally in Vienna, Ohio. “Let me tell you, my friends: There's no place I would rather be than here with the working men and women of Ohio.”

Obama chief strategist David Axelrod scoffed at the attack, saying “their efforts to deflect attention … are just going to fail.”

“I don’t know who showed up down in Florida where he raised $5 million,” Axelrod said, referring to a Monday event, “but my guess is that it wasn’t a lot of nurses, firefighters and police officers.”

The day started on a substantive note.

By the time Obama woke up in this swing state, McCain had already stepped out with a specific response to the economic upheaval. Appearing on morning news programs, McCain proposed a panel similar to one that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to probe what caused the crisis and how it can be prevented in the future.

“We need a 9/11 commission," McCain said. “We need a commission to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it and I know we can do that and I'll do it.”

Within hours, Obama had dismissed the commission as the “oldest Washington stunt in the book.”

In a speech in Jefferson County, a critical swing county, Obama reissued a six-point plan, which he first outlined in March, to tighten government regulation of financial institutions. The Democratic nominee also repeatedly sought to link McCain with conservative economic policies that Obama blamed for the turmoil.

“This was not the invisible hand of the market at work,” Obama said in a speech here. “These cycles of bubble and bust were symptoms of the ideology that my opponent is running to continue. John McCain has spent decades in Washington supporting financial institutions instead of their customers.”

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch, followed Monday by a 504-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average, were “nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed,” Obama said.